This invention relates to improved skateboards.
The sport of skateboarding has become extremely popular in recent years, but unfortunately has proven very dangerous, and has resulted in many injuries to persons engaging in the activity. Many of these injuries have been caused when the relatively small wheels of a skateboard come into contact with a pebble, twig, or irregularity in the surface on which the skateboard is being used, with the result that one or more of the wheels may be stopped, and the entire device may be either diverted unpredictably to a new course, overturned, or abruptly halted in its motion. The user is then often thrown from the skateboard onto a hard surface, and may be injured severely. Other injuries have been caused by the lack of any provision in a conventional skateboard for slowing or stopping of the board except by "side sliding," a movement which requires time and considerable skill to master. Also, prior skateboards are used in ways for which they are not adequately designed, i.e., kneeling, sitting, lying down, etc., and are so difficult to control as to preclude use by very young children or older persons.
It is understood that there have been some skateboards utilized in the past in which the wheels have been somewhat larger than conventional skate wheels, and in which the board has been cut away at the locations of the wheels to avoid contact therewith. However, such an arrangement leaves the wheels exposed for possible contact with a user's foot, and may in fact in that way tend to cause more accidents than it prevents.